New Jersey Corruption UPDATE

thank you you had your time you may sit down mayor michael mcpartlin was mad at me because i just asked if he and his fellow politicians were on the take i asked because they wanted to seize a valuable piece of land check out this view wouldn't you like to have an apartment with this view of the new york city skyline it's a rare gorgeous location right on the hudson river right now there's nothing here but dirt so this man who works for the developer maxwell group wants to build apartments like these thousands of people could live here with this great view and this whole pier would be open to the public sounds good to me but then the politicians in this town said no forget about it we're going to seize the property and spend millions of taxpayer dollars to put our department of public works here garbage trucks will like that this is a great you're absolutely right the city does say we'll also put in a park and parking but at taxpayer expense maxwell offered parking in parks at no cost parks we were offering mass transit and all at no cost to taxpayers why would edgewater say no to that the unsuccessful bidder is a fellow named fred davies told us you will never be able to develop this property fred davies says you can't be in edgewater and not be affiliated with me and i wonder if he controls the politicians in town too because the lawsuit filed by maxwell alleges corrupt transactions between davies and edgewater's politicians undervalued rentals loans for their business purposes through a bank that mr davies started and has the controlling interest in edgewater mayor michael mcpartlin is connected to davies the mayor lives in this building it's quite elegant with statues and fountains and it happens to be owned by fred davies according to the lawsuit the mayor pays below market rent though the mayor told the new york times he doesn't pay below market rent the mayor and city council say they have a good reason for using eminent domain and taxpayer money to seize maxwell's development the developer's proposal is too big says the mayor they just approve a larger project with a more intense density and guess for whom for fred davies work is already going on on his site because somehow davies got approvals for four giant buildings more than twice as tall as maxwell's proposal we tried to ask davies about all this but he didn't respond to our calls and emails how can the town justify approving dense development for dabies while rejecting a smaller proposal from a competitor i tried to ask edgewater's mayor and the city council about this but not one would agree to talk so i came here to a city council meeting and i asked are you on the tape i should explain why i'm asking that in a largely empty room the council session was full earlier but questions from people like me weren't allowed until most everyone had left are you on the tape because you're rejecting one building in favor of the one owned by the guy where you live mr mayor as your legal counsel i'm gonna suggest and recommend that you don't answer the questions of this gentleman right here i understood and not certainly not with that tone and the pertaining to the town or anything that's going on here you're more than welcome to use your vitamins to do that so i tried the big developer in town said more or less nobody developed here but me and that's the way it's turned out and you're going to put the department of public works there instead at this point i thought i might actually get my questions answered is it true that four of you are getting loans from mr davies bank and is it true that you get a discounted apartment in mr davey's building yeah i don't think it's appropriate but no no answers it's been two years since we first revealed the corruption and edgewater sit down shortly after that the mayor and the councilman did change their policy they okayed most of maxwell's development in turn maxwell dropped its corruption lawsuit davey still faces unrelated conspiracy charges but no politician has been prosecuted for self-dealing this dump remains just a dump now mired in a new lawsuit it could have been transformed into waterfront apartments that more than a thousand people could enjoy but because greedy businessmen want more for themselves and some politicians want every developer to kiss their rings nothing has been built and the dump remains a dump you

Channel: John Stossel

Views: 720,910

Keywords: John stossel, libertarian, free market, edgewater, crony, developers, bribe, corruption, new jersey, politicians, pay for play

Id: METC78GEW-A

Length: 5min 53sec (353 seconds)

Published: Tue May 25 2021